In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain by Eva Moreda Rodríguez
  • Cristina Urchueguía
Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain. By Eva Moreda Rodrı´guez. Pp. ix + 177. ( Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2017. £35.99. ISBN 978-0-19-021586-6.)

The death of Francisco Franco on 20 November 1975 was not a surprise. He died in Madrid after weeks of agony, covered by the press with obscene intrusiveness. After his death, the world celebrated the miraculous transformation of the longest modern European dictatorship into a democracy by means of a peaceful Transición. Yet the Transición itself had begun with a general amnesty, inevitably leading to collective amnesia about Francoism and the Civil War. Even forty-two years after Franco's death, nothing comparable to Germany's Historikerstreit (1986–7), a public debate about the relevance of the Holocaust to Germany's history, has taken place in Spain. Since the late 1990s, however, different disciplines have—albeit slowly—begun to shed light on cultural, academic, and political life during early Francoism. Eva Moreda's study constitutes a further, notable piece of research in this complex jigsaw puzzle.

Whereas the contribution of the exiles after the Civil War (1936–9) and the reappraisal of the cultural life during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–9) became top-level issues from the 1980s onwards, dealing with Francoist culture continues to be risky. Scholars have an ethical obligation to address the repression during Francoism, but to regard the work done by those who benefitted from the repressive atmosphere with general suspicion results in a moralizing instead of a critical attitude. Finding an even-handed perspective that is free of revenge, revisionism, or even harmonizing equidistance represents [End Page 689] an intellectual challenge. Eva Moreda is to be praised for proposing a plausible and fruitful approach. It may not be a coincidence that she wrote her book as a Ph.D. thesis at Royal Holloway (University of London), fostered by an environment of unbiased scholarly curiosity.

Moreda is not the first to delve into this uncomfortable period of music history, but the works of her predecessors show traces of prudent self-censorship and reflect the circumstances of their production. Gemma Pérez Zalduondo explicitly abstains from any form of judgement in her pioneering work about musical policy during Francoism, La música en España durante el Franquismo a través de la legislación (1936–1951) (Granada, 2002). Javier Suárez Pajares, in an edited book about Joaquín Rodrigo that was sponsored by the foundation which bears the composer's name—Javier Suárez-Pajares (ed.), Joaquín Rodrigo y la música en los años cuarenta (Valladolid, 2005)—attempts to rehabilitate the seemingly opportunistic figure of Rodrigo by questioning the rift that was produced by the Civil War and the Francoist putsch. Eva Moreda's study is able to eschew both precaution and anticipatory obedience as a result of its international perspective and affords a refreshing degree of objectivity. At the same time, this new academic context has forced the loss of ties with the discursive framework in question. Some of the book's detailed commentary on historical and political processes would have been expendable, given that they are common knowledge within Spanish scholarly debate.

The book's title is both an understatement and an exaggeration: Moreda writes about much more than music criticism. Indeed, music criticism acts as pretext to address a period in music history in its entire complexity. She adopts a bird's-eye view, and yet takes only a very selective part of Spain's musical life into consideration: the activities of high-ranking functionaries in Madrid, with a small side glance to Barcelona. Even the chapter devoted to the dissemination of traditional music throughout the country focuses on matters of political organization and the writings of a small group of functionaries, while the activities that took place outside offices and boardrooms are outlined only on the margins. Unfortunately, this generalization leaves blind spots. Madrid and Barcelona do not stand for Spain as a country: on the contrary, it is the exceptionality, density, and...

pdf

Share